Get the most from your UI automated test suite

User Interface test automation is difficult at the best of times. Your
teams need to work hard to keep automation suites running as smoothly as
possible. Automation test suites need to focus on long-term
maintainability and value since test software should always be treated
with the same care and respect that our production code is treated.
(Because test software is production software!)

Many teams
struggle with getting stable automation suites in place, especially when
their systemís user interface (UI) is changing. Frustration ramps up as
teams spend more time chasing broken tests, and each change seems to
work only for a few cycles. Itís not uncommon for teams to cut back on,
or entirely abandon, their UI automation efforts.

This doesnít
have to be the case, though! Careful planning and implementation around
element locator strategies can yield incredible results for automation
suites. When I work with teams, I initially focus on element locator
strategies since itís the first place tests will fail at, especially
when the UI is frequently updating.

In this article Iíll use Selenium WebDriver and Telerikís Test Studio as
examples; however, the concepts Iím discussing are applicable
regardless of whether youíre using someone elseís commercial tool or any
of the many wonderful open source APIs/drivers available to you.

Whatís the Fuss About Locators?When
we browse a web page, our eyes guide us to the areas on the page we
need to interact with: headings to read, images to examine, links to
click, input fields to enter text in, etc. When a test automation script
plays back, the underlying drivers/toolset need some way to find those
same elements on the page. Obviously the scripts donít have eyes, so the
toolset needs another way to handle this.

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